30th June

12 02 N
61 45 W

Weather; steamy and hot, wind n/a, waves n/a

Here we are at the end of the first half of the year, we have now been on our trip for 8 months and seem to have gotten nowhere, all because of a nasty little virus. We are seeing more countries open up their borders but each have their own rules and regulations around entering the country and it would seem that for now we are best off staying put where we are as we would have to do more quarantine in each country we visit despite being negative for the virus. We are hoping that over the next couple of months things will get back to a bit more normality and we will be able to travel onwards without being in another China Jail for whatever period the government of the countries we visit dictate, it's a good job that we aren't on a particular time frame though we would like to be back in Australia by October next year.
After a night spent in air conditioned splendor where we needed a blanket on the bed so as not to freeze in our sleep, we woke to a very warm day outside of the boat - I think it was more noticeable as the inside of the boat is like an ice box now! We had a leisurely cooked breakfast and decided that today wasn't going to be a busy day. I settled in to typing the end of yesterday's blog and then trying to upload it on an extremely slow internet connection. Gerry disappeared out onto the deck and put our awnings and hatch covers in place to keep the neighbours from being frightened to death by accidently viewing us wandering around with not a stitch of clothing in place, the quarantine flag was lowered and put away for the forseeable future. He also hooked up our water hose to the dock supply with some difficulty - the hose wouldn't screw into place properly, we then discovered that no one's hose fit properly and they all leak so we waste as much fresh water as we use. Next thing I know Gerry is gathering up his back pack and wallet, unbeknown to me he had arranged to go to Island Water World with Dale for a "few bits and pieces". Gerry decided that the best bet was to take the dinghy, the only problem with that is that he can't get the outboard off of the stern of the boat to put onto the dinghy - the second choice was to row the dinghy across. So the two of them set off with Gerry rowing after he had retrieved our dinghy from next to the boat to our port side. They were gone for a fair while and I just took the time to do the tidying up jobs around the boat and relax. On his return I asked if it was a successful trip (i.e.: how much had it cost us?) it was partly successful as the store offers duty free purchases to visiting boats as long as we are registered with the store, Gerry thought we were registered from a visit to the same store but in a different place but as he couldn't be sure he left purchasing anything until he has checked it out and / or registered again. To buy without the duty free discount it would have cost an extra 37% on top of the marked price - they don't need to have our 37%, we can buy the things another day, nothing was that urgent. He didn't come back entirely empty handed though as they had to go past a bakery that had fresh scrolls and bread - he didn't resist those! By now it was lunch time and I hate to say it but our diet for the day was totally stuffed up by having scrolls and nothing else!
We took an afternoon stroll around the dock to the dock master's office as we had heard that they have router boxes that plug in via the dock TV sockets and provide better internet connections and Gerry being a constant internet user wanted to check it out. Sure enough the dock office girl supplied us with a box, cable and plug, we made our way back to the boat bumping into Gene and Renee on the way. Gene laughed and said that he had tried 2 different boxes from the office and neither had worked - good luck with yours! It didn't give us much confidence but when we got back on board Gerry plugged it all in and hey presto - nothing! Like Gene had said it didn't work at all. Our neightbour on the Catamaran has the line attached to his TV outlet so we stopped and asked if he was using it as internet connection - yes he was, with no problems most of the time, this of course made Gerry's blood pressure rise, there was nothing we could do about it by late afternoon as the office was closed but I know Gerry will be knocking on the office door tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn to try and sort out something better. At 4 o'clock there is a gathering at the swimming pool each day with drinks (no glass allowed) so we made our way to the pool at the allotted time planning on having a swim, there were far too many people in the pool to have a swim so I didn't even bother getting in the water, Gerry got in and messed about for a while having swimming "races " with Savannah - his swimming is getting worse as he didn't win a single race! It started to rain whilst we were at the pool so the sensible dry adults made their way to the restaurant and bar whilst Gerry went back to the boat for dry clothes and joined us once he was dry. We had an early dinner and are now settled in for the evening. It wasn't an exciting day compared to yesterday but probably just the one we needed to recover. We have plans for tomorrow which are set in jelly - likely to change at any time, so we intend to have an early night and hopefully another good sleep.